'A Separate Cinema'; A TCM film series examines the works of black movie makers.

[Orange County Edition]

Los Angeles Times - Los Angeles, Calif.

Author:

GLENN McNATT

Date:

Jul 2, 1998

Start Page:

10

Section:

Calendar; PART-F; Entertainment Desk

Text Word Count:

799

Abstract
(Document Summary)

Hollywood has always been a battleground over images of race and ethnicity and their relation to the American dream. From "Birth of a Nation" to "Gone With the Wind," that image has largely excluded black Americans.

For that reason, early black filmmakers set up their own production companies outside the Hollywood system and developed their own exhibition circuit of theaters in urban black neighborhoods and segregated rural areas that held special screenings for black audiences.

"The term 'race' movies comes from the places, especially in the South, where regular theaters showed black movies at night for segregated audiences, or towns that had black theaters ran them all day," says Thomas Cripps, a retired Morgan State University history professor who has written extensively about blacks in the motion picture industry.

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